ABC International School, British Vietnamese International School and the British International School came together this week to celebrate musical talent in the FOBISIA Primary Young Musician of the Year Competition 2019.
Children from across ABC International School, BVIS and BIS have all taken part in first-round auditions and semi-finals in their schools. On Tuesday 15th October they took part in the final at BIS for the FOBISIA HCMC Young Musician Competition, an annual celebration of music from our younger soloists.
Each child has had to go through two rounds of auditions to make it to the grand finale, which was held in the BIS Secondary Theatre. From the first to the last round nearly three hundred children have taken part across the three schools but only twelve made it to the final performance.
Our judges, Ms Georgina Hardiman (Head of Secondary Music at BVIS), Mr Gareth Groves (Head of Visual and Performing Arts at ABC) and Mr Ian Alexander (Director of Music at BIS), had a challenging decision to make and had many conversations about who should win the prestigious title of Young Musician of the Year 2019.
Our young performers excelled on the piano, violin, cello and flute. We heard music from Vivaldi, Bach, Chopin, Offenbach, Rachmaninoff and Grieg. Our audience, which was the largest to date for this event, was pleased to hear music from four previous BIS winners; Anya Chakrabarty playing violin, Johnny Pham and Sanny Wu playing the piano and Caitlin Chua performing on her cello.
A huge well done to all of the finalists: SooHyeon Kim, Chen Xin Koh, Angelia (Hoang Ky Thu) Nguyen, Bach Luu, Nguyen Tuong Anh Ngo, Minh Chau Dinh, Bim (Dao Huy Nam) Luu, Sally Bae and BQ (Bao Quyen) Nguyen. These young performers have worked incredibly hard to get to this final stage of the competition and have also shown wonderful musicianship in their support of each other.
Special congratulations go to our top three performers who this year are; SeungBie Kim (BIS) who came third and performed a famous Vivaldi violin concerto; Harry Zhang (BIS) who came second overall and performed Chopin’s Nocturne on the piano; and our winner of the 2019 Young Musician of the Year Competition, Dolly Nguyen (BIS) who performed a medley on the piano called Anitra’s Polka composed by Grieg and Rachmaninoff.
Well done to everyone who took part and I look forward to hearing many more entries again next year. Thank you to all those who have supported and hopefully we can continue to share in the delights of our children as they continue to grow as marvellous musicians.
Mrs Linden Teale, Music Teacher
